Last week… Do you remember last week’s sermon? I do. After all, I have a copy of the manuscript.
Last week’s sermon was about wrestling with God. It was about struggling to make sense of our faith in a way that doesn’t force us to check our brains at the door. It was about finding a God we can actually believe in, a God we can actually pray to without feeling like we are just going through the motions.
It was about finding a faith that is believable, and letting go of simplistic notions and childish images of God that get in the way of faith.
Today, one week later, we have the story from Matthew’s gospel in which Jesus walks on the stormy sea; the story in which Peter tries to walk on the stormy sea but fears the storm and begins to sink; the story which concludes with Jesus’s reprimand, “You of little faith – why did you doubt?”
How many of us actually, really, truly believe that we can, with enough faith, walk on water? If anyone raises their hand, I’ll fill the baptistery right now, because that’s something we’d all like to see.
I suspect that most, if not all, of us have sentimentalized this Bible story – and others as well – so that we don’t really have to think about them too much. We read stories like this and say, “Well, you just gotta have enough faith. You just need to put away your doubt.” But we don’t really think about what we are saying. Do we really believe what we are saying? Do we really believe that with enough faith, we can walk on water?
We don’t really think about what we are saying, which means that we do voluntarily check our brains in at the door.
Well, if that’s the case, then I invite you to go back to the door and retrieve your brain and bring it back in here with you. If you need a minute to do that, we’ll wait. It’s going to be important for you to have that thinking camp on as we wrestle with this Bible story today. With our thinking caps on, we may or may not decide to take stories like this literally. In fact, I’m not going to tell you that you should or should not believe the literal truth of this story. It doesn’t really matter to me much if you take this story literally or not. But it does matter that you take it seriously, and you can only do that with your thinking cap on.
I don’t know about you, but as a kid growing up in Sunday School, I was taught to believe that I really could walk on water if I had enough faith. I don’t know if my Sunday School teachers meant to leave me with that impression or not, but they did. Hearing this story, it seemed to me that Jesus really did expect folks to have enough faith to walk on water themselves. And of course, Peter actually did it! He only lasted a moment, but hey, that moment “proved” that it was possible.
Then he became afraid and began to sink. Peter – the boldest and bravest of the disciples – began to sink. This proved that having enough faith was a very difficult thing to achieve. It set the bar impossibly high.
It wasn’t long before I realized I had a problem: if even Jesus’s boldest, bravest disciple couldn’t muster up enough faith, what hope was there for a timid young boy like me?
And that is the dilemma I think many people find themselves in. How can we possibly have enough faith? How can we possibly believe every unbelievable thing that the church tells us to believe?
A lot of people leave the church and even abandon their faith because they feel as if they are being asked to believe the unbelievable. They know that they’ll never walk on water, so they give up.
And I can’t really say that I blame them. The church has a history of insisting that its members walk on water. Come on, you can do it, if you have enough faith … and if you check your brain at the door.
Let’s get real, shall we? You and I are never going to literally walk on water. I can fill up the baptistery and you can practice all you want, but even though I’m a seminary-trained, church-ordained, prayer-sustained preacher, I am certain that your feet will find the bottom of the baptistry.
For some of you, that may come as a disappointment. You were really hoping to one day walk on water! For most of you, though, I suspect it’s a great relief to hear this. Now you can stop trying to walk on water, stop trying to do the impossible, stop checking your brain at the door, and be real.
By the way, yes, I do know that “all things are possible with God.” But why would God, who created the laws of nature and physics, choose to violate those laws just so you can impress your friends by walking across the baptistry without getting wet? Why is that important to God?
So. What do we do with this story now? Let’s start by talking about language.
Jesus, it says, walked on not just any water; Jesus walked on the sea. Twice it says that. Jesus walked toward the disciples on the sea. The disciples saw Jesus walking toward them on the sea.
Peter, it says, wanted to walk on the water. “Lord, command me to come to you on the water.” Jesus said, “Come,” and Peter started walking on the water.
Literally speaking, I suppose it makes no difference whether you call it the sea or the water. But why, then, did Matthew twice say that Jesus walked on the sea, and twice that Peter walked on the water?
What if I told you that water is water, but the sea is much more? In the book of Job, it says that God alone tramples the waves of the sea; God along stomps on the sea’s back. The reference in Hebrew is to the Canaanite sea god, Yam, the god who represents chaos and turmoil.
Jesus didn’t just walk on water; he trampled across the sea. He trampled on the chaos of this world.
There is a lot of chaos and turmoil in the world, and most of it causes a great deal of fear. The news media, of course, thrive on chaos and turmoil; we watch the news, we witness the chaos and turmoil, and it leaves us feeling anxious and afraid.
And when we become anxious and afraid, it negatively affects our behavior. We turn against our fellow human beings. We circle the wagons, and become overly protective of all that we’ve come to think of as ours. Anyone who is different than us, and anything that is different than what we are used to, becomes an enemy.
The media feed us a steady diet of chaos and turmoil, which we ravenously consume. Wars. Famines. Terrorism. Economic collapse. The breakdown of society.
The resulting fear and anxiety is seen in the backlash against immigrants. Scripture is very clear about welcoming the foreigner, the alien among you, but a lot of Christians seem to forget that in their anxiety.
The resulting fear and anxiety is seen in the fact that we spend 6 ½ times what any other nation spends on military defense and weapons of war. 6 ½ times.
And how do you explain what happened to Martin David Sanchez two weeks ago today? Daniel, who lives in Ontario, was in Long Beach visiting friends on July 24 when he was physically assaulted after admitting he was gay. Some teeth were knocked out, others were cracked, and he suffered tissue damage and abrasions all over his body. What was it about him that his attackers feared so much?
Yam, the god of chaos and turmoil, is alive and well.
Even in the church.
Think of all the ways the world has changed in the last 50 or 100 years. What a different world this was in 1911 or even 1961 than it is today!
Now think of how much the church has changed in order to be relevant to a 21st century world.
We haven’t changed all that much. We’ve resisted change. Because we’re afraid. We’re afraid of sinking in the chaos and the turmoil.
A raging sea of chaos, turmoil, and uncertainty. Rather than succumb to all this, Jesus calmly walked upon it. He believed in God, which is to say that he trusted God completely, so no matter how much fear was within him, he was able to stay on top of it, and not sink into the negative attitudes and actions that fear gives way to.
Well, the disciples had never seen this before. In a world under Roman occupation, they were surrounded by fear. Fear was what drove them. Fear was what led some of them to want to fight back, and fear was what led others to hide or acquiesce to Roman power. Either way, they lived under the power of Yam.
So when they saw Jesus walking across Yam’s back, well, they had never seen such a thing before. It was so startling to them that it only added to their fear. Who could possibly walk upon the back of the sea god but a ghost?
But Jesus said to them: “Do not be afraid.” Do not fear.
And that’s when Peter said, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” And Jesus said, “Come.” So Peter stepped out of the boat and started walking on the water.
But wait a minute: you can’t walk on water! Peter, realizing this, became afraid. Yam took control over Peter, and he began to sink.
Jesus pulled him out of the water and as they climbed back into the boat, Jesus said: “You of little faith; why did you doubt?”
By now you’re probably beginning to realize that there’s more going on here than walking across some water. It’s not just some little magic trick, walking on water, or a little initiation of sorts to see who can walk on water and who can’t. It’s much more than that.
And if your head is swirling around in confusion because you’re not quite sure about the meaning of this story, then good for you. That’s a sign that your brain is now engaged. Perhaps you have more unanswered questions now than you did when you walked in here this morning. Good. Only fools think they have all the answers.
It doesn’t matter whether you believe it’s possible to actually walk on water or not. Walking on water isn’t really the point, and believing whether or not it’s possible, or whether or not Jesus actually walked on water, misses the point of what the Bible means when it uses words like believe and faith.
For example, as pastor it is my hope that all of you believe in Bixby Knolls Christian Church and the work we do here. Now, what does that mean? Does it mean that you believe everything about this church? Do you believe that this church is made primarily out of wood, with stained glass window?
Do you believe in the trinity of sanctuary, fellowship hall, and classrooms, three buildings that are connected into one?
Do you believe that in 1946, construction began on the sanctuary, which in turn became the fellowship hall once the new sanctuary was built?
Do you believe that the wood used to build this church is treated yellow pine, harvested in western North America by flannel-wearing lumberjacks, delivered to 1240 E. Carson St. via flatbed trucks and trailers in accordance with city building codes and safety regulations?
Does it matter?
Isn’t it more important to ask, “Do you believe in the ministry of Bixby Knolls Christian Church? Are you willing to commit yourself to its mission, dedicate your life to what it stands for, and love the God it represents with your whole heart?”
That is what it means to believe, Biblically-speaking.
It doesn’t matter if you believe it’s possible to walk on water. What matters is that you believe in the one who can calm the storms and calm the fears in your life. What matters is that you put your faith in the one who is able to walk across chaos and turmoil without sinking into it. What matters is that you love and trust God, who holds you by the hand and will not let you sink.
To believe that God is with you and will not let you sink into the world’s turmoil, to really believe that – now that’s a miracle.
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